My friends' trains

This page contains pictures and movies of equipment and layouts owned by some of my friends.

My friend Henner built a type A Climax almost entirely from scratch. Only the wheels, truck side frames and gears are comercial parts. Here are some pictures of its first run under steam. As you can see, it did not have a boiler yet, so we ran it on steam borrowed from my Mamod...

Here are some pictures of the finished model:

A couple of overall views (the roof, which is held in place by some locating pins and miniature magnets, is removed in the second picture).

In its current (summer 2004) configuration, this engine is butane fired. The following picture shows the tank which holds the gas. It is made of a copper pipe with two hand-formed end flanges re-inforced by a longitudinal stay. The filler valve and outlet valve are commeriacl products from Sulphur Springs.

The gas is burned in a ceramic radiant burner located below the home made, four-flue, vertical boiler.

Here is a close up view of the scratch built safety valve:

Here are two (not very good) views of the twin oscilating cylinder steam engine. Henner not only scratchbuilt this engine, but came up with its design.

Between the boiler and the engine there is a displacement lubricator:

The following pictures show how the power is transmitted from the engine to the wheels, note the special, offset, bevel gears.

The following pictures and movie were taken on May 29th 2004 at Dwight Ennis's house. This was the first steam up on his home made portable layout. In addition to Dwight and myself, Eric and Henner were also present.

This first picture shows an overall view of the layout. Note that the track is not yet permanently installed.

Here are a couple of pictures of Dwight's Heisler locomotive from Catatonk.

Eric's two cylinder Shay from Accucraft has been added in front of the Heisler for a great double header.

You might wonder what is going on in the next picture... If you watch this movie (8MB download) you will our steam donkey draging a log on track: we needed something to hold the block (pulley) for the haul back line, so we just used a locomotive! This is my Argyle Philadelphia which you can also see in action in the movie.